


what did you bury before those hands pulled me from the earth?

by Beckingham



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, I mean, M/M, Poe is in denial, Sad with a Happy Ending, holy shit angst, i guess, no one DIES but comatose Finn is not exactly a treat, so is Rey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-15 07:55:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5777605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beckingham/pseuds/Beckingham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poe just wants to be the same man Finn has always come home to. He just wants Finn to come home, period.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what did you bury before those hands pulled me from the earth?

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this.](http://a-tardis-at-downton.tumblr.com/post/137726501436/otpdisaster-person-b-heartbroken-and-going) Titled from Hozier's "Like Real People Do."
> 
> I am so sorry.

He doesn’t like it when people refer to it as “the accident.” He understands why, he _does,_ but losing Finn like that – living in limbo after that – “the accident” can’t even begin to express what took place.

Any day now, he’d say, any day now Finn would just open his eyes. Just. Be _okay_. And they’d deal with whatever fallout his long sleep had put in suspension. The trauma, the therapy (physical, emotional, whatever Finn needed)… and a wheelchair. Poe had come to terms with how things would be once Finn came back to him. He just wasn’t willing to accept that his grieve and slow acceptance of the alteration in their lifestyle could be irrelevant in the end.

He is not willing to accept the end.

Rey, who is Finn’s friend, always Finn’s friend, is the only one left who is holding on like him. She’ll sit with him when he visits and grip his wrist with a firm hand. She’s so solemn, and he is in awe of her patience, that she seems to have found a balance between waiting for Finn to wake up and living her own life even with a hole ripped into it. She’s mended the edges of it. She’s carefully crafted a place for Finn to slip back into and, in the year they’ve both sat together, has set aside a space for Poe. So maybe she is also Poe’s friend, now, but Poe is a little scared, that if things change too much, then Finn will come back to an unfamiliar world and he’ll be lonely because of it.

Like Poe has been lonely.

It’s why it’s taken him so long to do this. Pack their things up tidy and begin the process of moving. He’s left Finn’s office untouched for so long that he just lets himself breathe for a few minutes before he stumbles in with empty boxes that yawn open. Somewhere in another room, Rey is helping, he hears the rip of packing tape and it grounds him.

(The things that Poe is most scared of, truthfully, is that Finn won’t even know him anymore. He doesn’t even recognize himself these days. He knows he used to smile more. He used to smile.)

He finds the flash drive in one of the desk drawers, takes it out and turns it over and over with his fingers, the warm swell of curiosity taking him off guard. The Poe that Finn knew would have nosed his way into his business – always delighted to see what work his brilliant boyfriend was putting together. He’d kiss Finn’s forehead and Finn would furrow his brow in mock exasperation, and then he’d open up his laptop and show Poe his world.

Poe wants so badly to be Finn’s Poe again.

He wants Finn so badly – he can practically taste the metal of the bit in his mouth.

He slides the drive home into his laptop. And then.

And then Finn’s face is suddenly filling the screen.

“Poe,” he says. Finn clears his throat, glances off-screen nervously, Poe doesn’t know at what exactly. “Poe, I think you should. I think _we_ should. Shit. I mean!”

The Finn on screen drops his head to his hands and groans. After a few seconds he looks back at the camera, a determined look on his face. The same look that made Poe press kisses into his palm before he’d twined their fingers together. Poe _aches_.

“Poe. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I mean, I was going to do that anyway, and nothing has to change. I don’t want it to change. I just want you, but what you’ve given me so far is enough. More than enough, but I. I kinda want more. I’m selfish.”

Finn chuckles. Poe touches the screen, feels the static instead of the soft smoothness of Finn’s cheek. “It’s not that you’re not enough. It’s that I always want us to have everything we deserve. And, Poe, I truly believe we deserve each other.

“So you should marry me, okay?”

Poe somehow hears a soft sob from behind him over the roar in his ears. He reaches back without turning around, and Rey slips her hand into his. And Rey cries while the Finn on screen rolls his eyes at himself.

“Oh god, I’m so _lame_. ‘Marry me, okay?’ God, Poe, you’re the smooth talker here.” Suddenly Finn is grinning, wide and reckless and teasing. “Do me a favor and write the proposal, okay? I trust you to get it right. You always do.

“I’ll take care of the rings.”

Finn reaches toward the screen, Poe presses his fingers against Finn’s and then the screen goes black.

Rey is quiet. Poe wriggles out of her grip and grabs at the desk drawer – pulling it out of its slot in his vigor and crashing it to the floor, desperate to examine its contents. Rey’s hands are on his shoulders, but she does nothing to stop him, just waits. She is so much better at waiting than him.

Sure enough, there is a fabric box tucked away and Poe carefully cracks it open, barely looks at the ring inside before he slides it onto his finger.

He pauses. “It’s too tight.”

A laugh startles out of him. “Finn,” he gasps. “ _Finn_ , I thought your job was to take care of the rings, darling.”

He laughs until he suddenly isn’t, and Rey is curled around him, face tucked into his neck. He can feel her wet cheeks against his skin. Her lips curled into the faintest of smiles.

“You’ll have to give him shit for it, I guess.”

He leans back into her and slowly rotates the gleaming band on his finger. “Yeah, I guess I will, huh? Apparently I have a proposal to write too.”

Rey nods. “But first, let’s make sure he has a home to come to.”

Somewhere, a few miles away, a house sits vacant – wheelchair ramp affixed and ready to be filled with everything he and Finn deserve.

Each other.

(When Finn wakes up, there is a ring on his finger that wasn’t there before.

“Oh,” he mumbles. “You found it.”

Poe smiles like he used to and says yes.)


End file.
